WeissKreuz What If
by LoveyouHateyou
Summary: Who would Yohji and Aya have become without Weiss? Would they give up one another to regain their old lives? Who planted this question into Yohji's mind? No charitable thoughts here...
1. Chapter 1 Glitter Kitties

**What If **

**Summary:** What if Aya and Yohji could choose to have their old lives back? What if losing one another would be the price for this? Is it right to be selfish? Generosity is not necessarily one of their strengths... and just which redhead did put that flea in Yohji's ear?  
**Rating/Warnings, valid for all chapters of this story:** **M** for male/male affection, dirty thoughts, references to sex,and foulmouthed boys.  
**Disclaimer:** This story is a not-for-profit work. All rights to the Weisskreuz characters with their current owners.

xxx

Man, **VampireLouis**, your reviews just blow me away! You're a star, you know that?

**LadyOrient, Rosemarykiss** - it is so good to know you read my stuff, and I am glad about each of your feedback notes - much appreciated!

Okay, my conscience decided to prod me after I read all this praise, and I just had to amend and repost this story. I think it has improved a lot, and apologise for the errors etc. that were in the first sloppy version. So this new, shinier version is dedicated to you. Hope you like it.

Cheers,  
one still waffy fanboy  
LH

xxx

**Glitter Kitties  
**(Aya)

Sometimes they're just pissing me off. The whole stupid lot of them, including Kudoh. Especially Kudoh.

I do not like working the till at the shop because of the children. All those little girls, with hopeful eyes and silly little giggles, shy blushes and still daring, testing, beaming smiles at me... it's simply too much to bear, for it rakes up memories of my sister. But I am awkward with words, and the other three know it and let me sizzle.

Though Yohji will show me mercy now and then and simply take over, allowing me to slip away into the back to prepare arrangements or do the deliveries. He has the uncanny knack of catching me right before I'm ready to crack up; how does he do it? Omi tends to put us together on shift. I resent that, sometimes...

It was Ken – of course, the other two would have gotten _him_ to do this, and he is brazen enough to actually dare – who shoved the single long-stemmed pink rose across the counter to me. From the stalk dangled a small card, covered with glitter and kitty pictures, and attached witha gold lamee ribbon. I never look at stuff like that; it irritates me but I have learned to simply ignore it. So I was about to toss rose and card into the garbage bag by the workbench at the back, when I caught Omi rolling his eyes and shooting a knowing grin at Ken.

_Hey, told you, he's a coward,_ this glance, this smile proclaimed triumphantly, and Ken grinned back, _yeah, smartass, 'cos you always know..._

The chibis are inveterate gamblers; they always have some bet or dare running, and it is unfortunate and annoying that they should have chosen me as one of their favourite subjects. They know nothing of me. Perhaps that's why they won't let off.

Yohji leaned against the backdoor, his arms folded over his chest, a cigarette dangling from his mouth – of course, he is always smoking and tastes like it, too. He was watching the scene. I hate being watched like that, especially by him. It makes me feel naked.

"Won't you at least look at it?" Ken asked, all hazel-eyed innocence, and Omi had a hard time to keep from laughing, I could tell. They seem to think I'm stupid, and sometimes I am tempted to blow a fuse at them. But then, who would help me fulfil my dream? The only dream left to me: my revenge. So, in the end, it does not matter what they do to taunt me; it is just petty squabbling that cannot really touch me.

"Iie," I tell him, "but you might like it, Kenken: you should grab the chance while you have it, once in a blue moon."

He does not like that and gives me a heated glare. Omi looks venomous, but Yohji steps in, smiling and smooth, wily as always. He takes the flower and the card off me. "How nice," he says, winking at the chibis, and Omi at least has enough sense to nudge Ken; they leave, beating a rather hasty retreat through the front door. To go play soccer, I suppose, or visit one of Omi's schoolmates for a session of booze and heavy metal. They call that homework.

Yohji draws at his cigarette that is hardly more than a long stalk of ash by now. He reads the card, rakes one hand slowly through his shaggy bleached hair and smiles a bit more,a soft sheen in his eyes. "Man, Aya, I'd love to get things like this." Bet he does, he is easy to impress. He looks up, trying to see my face, but I am busy right now, counting the takings and totting up the sales. "But I can see what rankled," he says quietly.

I slam the register shut; it protests with a shrill ring. "Graceful!" I cannot help but blurt out in anger, "Delicate! Cute! Gimme a fucking break! I am no woman!"

He flinches a bit, does not like me swearing, and I have touched a sore point with him, too: he would like to top me more often. I even like it, but no matter what he tries to coax me into it, I cannot bring myself to give in unless I am to exhausted to fight him off. Apart from that, he uses me as his hold on the things in life he considers cultured, educated, beautiful. He does not like his illusion disturbed.

I have no illusions. When I undress in the evening, to get ready for bed, I never pass the mirror in the bathroom without a glance at least – not out of vanity, just to reaffirm what I see there: a bony frame, wiry muscles and taut sinews under my scarred hide. Angles and planes, no curves. No softness. I am no woman. My sister is, and my mother was. Now they are broken; tender, wrecked dolls, and my love for them has become nothing but a sea of pain. It is a bad world for women, and we make it like that, but I had to realise that nothing I can do will change this. My mother is dead, and my sister is dying. Every one of us lost the women that made our lives complete, and now we try not to get involved with women anymore because every time we try, there is more loss, more pain, more helpless anger... We have no right to be the cause of it.

I am a man, even if I let Yohji have me sometimes and he treats me like something that could break under his touch.

I hate that, too.  
I do not think I am delicate in any way  
And it feels good to confirm this with every mission we get.

xxx

Next chapter: Balls And Butchers


	2. Chapter 2 Balls And Butchers

**Balls And Butchers  
**(Yohji) 

Aya bangs the register shut, rattles the blinds down and storms from the shop in a huff. I know I won't see him tonight. This time, the chibis have really overdone it. They have scratched Aya's honour badly, not to mention that it's gonna be difficult to get him to sleep with me for a while now 'cos he feels it's demeaning what he does with me in bed. He thinks it makes him weak to enjoy a few moments of warmth and love, and to him, the source of this does matter, too. I'm a bloke. He is straight at heart and a master of ruthless denial...

He may be pretty, but he has nothing feminine about him. Anyone who doubts this should watch him in action, when he is not a nice sight at all, bloodied and stinking of gore, with a nasty snarl on his handsome face... He reminds me of Schuldig when he is fighting, down and dirty. His beauty is brittle, harsh, his features sharp and hawkish, his lips are thin and unsuited for smiling, his eyes hard beneath the purple contacts he favours...

No, Aya is no woman.

Asuka was one, and Manx is one, even though sometimes she seems to have bigger balls than me. Aya's beauty is different because he is lacking something they have, though for the life of me I cannot figure out what that might be. Warmth perhaps, though there is heat enough under his layers of teflon and ice to outburn a furnace. It is wildfire-heat, searing, dangerous, and utterly destructive. Sometimes we get a taste of it on missions, and we soon gathered that he enjoys his work that has a lot in common with that of a butcher...

So I can see why he disliked the card. Omi should have known better than to rub things in like that; Aya is not the best one for pranks. On the other hand, the chibi should not be here at all but play and fool around like any normal kid of his age.

Omi is nineteen, lives a borrowed life, gets paid for murder. He and Ken cling to one another because that is as near as they will get to teenage life as it comes outside the Koneko. Omi does not even know a normal life, and I doubt he would function in it. None of us would. We have lost, or never learned, the skills we would need.

I know all that. But sometimes, like now when I keep turning the flower and the card over in my hands and the air around me is thick and blue with cigarette smoke, when I had enough sake to get foggy in the head and my vision blurs pleasantly, I cannot help but wonder...

What if...

Sometimes, when I'm not quick enough to reel in my runaway dreams, I get carried away. Sometimes, when I lie in Aya's room, on his futon, wrapped in the faint, sharp aroma of pine needles and steel and pretend to read one of his books, while he sits with his back against the wall by the door. Ready to bolt or fight, even here, with his katana on his lap as he keeps himself busy honing the blade. When we are together like that, and if I am careful, I can watch him over the rim of my glasses. It is a bit of a cat-and-mouse game because he will try to size me up when I'm not paying attention. He'll look me over, flitting back to his work as soon as I shift, and he'll do his own bit of thinking.

Sometimes, I do not want to know what he is thinking.

I light another cigarette, start misting the plants in the display window - something that is usually his job - and let my thoughts drift. What if?

What if he had grown up to lead the life that had been so carefully mapped out for him? Completed school at the private place that was so incredibly expensive, gone on to one of the best universities money and connections could buy, then proceed in a nice, straight line into a well-arranged job and a strategic marriage. His path made smooth for him by the connections of his family, every obstacle bought or blasted out of his way so he could concentrate entirely on becoming...

What would he have become?

Honesty and honour do not normally sit well with the kind of success the likes of Takatori crave, and no one can earn with their hands work more than they need to clothe and house themselves and their family. Aya's father whom he still adores had rather close dealings with Takatori. I was curious – call it a professional habit of mine – and now I know that their business relationship was of the long-term kind before the whole load of shit hit the fan.

Aya would have learned the skills to run his father's empire; he sure has the character for it: unyielding, ruthless... cold. He can be cold.

Perhaps he would have gone to lunch with a Takatori and thought nothing of it. Business associates. And perhaps he would have used the services of someone like me. All those high and mighty ones do, at some point in time. Hiring a snoop who earns his keep by prying into other people's lives, often with disastrous consequences. But I was never paid to care about the consequences of my work, and so I tried to block that out. I had enough dealings with people like his father or Takatori, cleaning up their dirty little secrets in exchange for good fees. They dislike paying my kind for our services because they have to share what makes them uneasy, vulnerable, less formidable in their corporate cut-'n-thrust. They prefer to despise my kind instead, but they'll pay up anyway. Photos, a hit... whatever. They pay as long as it's quality work.

At least I do work for my keep, and I was never good at shrouding my job in pleasing little phrases involving 'conviction', 'justice' and such like.

The people who pay us hate to be shown a piece of their dirty souls bare.  
And sometimes, they are so businesslike that they won't even notice anymore.

Would he have become like that? I do not know.  
Could he? I'd rather not answer that one.

xxx

Next chapter: Black Fantasy


	3. Chapter 3 Black Fantasy

**Black Fantasy**  
(Aya) 

It is better to be alone now, in my room, in the dusky silence I prefer when my nerves are jangling from the sheer idiocy of all this. Yohji has such stupid illusions. Tells me he loves me and then goes out whoring around, no matter what he calls it. Chasing lost dreams, I believe, just as I tried to cling to the past, to my memories, to my old self. It's not worth it; it made me weak and sappy – not a useful thing in my line of work. He should have grasped this by now, but then he never does. He can be dense if he wants to be.

What did he expect? He more or less laid himself out for me, and when I asked him to show me what to do, it was not about sex. I have banged a couple of women and know my way round – it was business, paid women who don't ask questions and don't expect to be seduced; I could control the whole thing and leave without further ado once it was done. Business. An efficient way to deal with this matter, and I was not surprised to find it rather bland and very unlike the stuff in the porn magazines Yohji shares with the chibis.

I merely asked him to show me how to do it with a bloke. Having relief close at hand can be helpful indeed. I hate the haunts he visits, I do not want to deal with the noise and the stupidity of it all, so chances that I'd pick up a suitable fuck are remote; neither do I like the idea of coming home with a different screw every other night. And paying for it every time – well, I think it's really not worth it.

Consistency is nice. Consistency means stability, a constant, something I can control. There are not many consistencies in our lives. I know he gets himself tested regularly; he is meticulous and careful about these things. He is reliable with that, which I find convenient. He also is a great shag, which at first surprised me, but then I suppose he has honed his skills in countless practice sessions. I prefer not to think about this. So this side of my needs is nicely taken care of, an arrangement to suit both of us... though sometimes he bothers me with his love-talk.

I hate it when he clings, so he tries hard not to let on.

He might not talk fluffy nonsense anymore if he knew what I would really like to do to him, and it makes me wonder sometimes just how much darkness there is inside me. For I would like to take him without fuss, fuck his mouth and come over his face, see him hurt and anxious, his eyes watering with pain and humiliation, while someone else has my backside the way I really want to, rough and without much care, plain sex and nothing else. I just know who I would like for that, but Yohji cannot grasp why I hate his on-off thing with Schuldig. Who, by the way, knows exactly what I want, why, and how. We are kindred spirits, I think, and Yohji's sunny mind is unmarred by this particular idea of fun.

I'd rather he stayed that way. Unspoiled... sort of.

It means that I won't live out those fantasies, at least not in their entirety, because Yohji has the knack to disarm me with those cow's eyes he gives me, all love and affection and, damn him, sincerity. He thinks we have more than convenience fucks, and for all I keep telling him, I cannot get him to grasp it. I do not want him to love me.

It still startled me to find that I cannot bring myself to hurt him like that.  
Not like I want things to hurt.

Why then does he have to run to Schuldig?

xxx

Next chapter: Frozen Pride


	4. Chapter 4 Frozen Pride

**Frozen Pride**  
(Yohji) 

With the shop finished and the takings delivered to Omi who will bank them, I go to check on Aya, just to make sure he is there. "Leave me alone, Kudoh," he growls at me from his place just by the door, where he sits crosslegged on the tatami and reads. He shoots me a glare that means this is definitely not a night for sex because he wants to bruise me, cut me, hurt me. He can be creative; I've seen him at work, and I'm not keen at all to have his patterns all over my hide. So I decide it is better to let him steam off for a while. He lets me go without lifting his head, but as soon as I turn my back, I can feel daggers jabbing at me. I'm glad to leave.

So why do I love him?  
Sometimes, I find this difficult to answer, but then I remember:

The night I caught him in my wire, like a broken butterfly. The evening I first saw him wash the garish dye out of his hair and take out the purple contacts.**1** Raging Aya turning into Ran the cultured, gentle youth, well-bred, educated, and mild-mannered. The only thing to link the two is his damn pride.

Pride. It brought us close and it pulled us apart, for I know I will never be able to match him – his upbrining, his past. The golden future that may still lay in waiting for him if he only cared to look. It left me reeling to realise that I could never hope for more than I have now, but I desperately wanted all of him, even if it hurt, even if it would get too much. I could see that, and still wanted.

For then, stripped of his mission gear and his colours, with his shiny dark hair neat and fragrant, his eyes dusky blue, his bony body wrapped into a plain grey yukata, he was innocent again. He was Ran, the young boy who tried to hang on to the fading memories of former happiness, and to a dying girl on a hospital bed. Ran who would sit for hours staring at the silk-bound haiku **2 **collection in his lap, and I could see the tears pressing against his eyes.

All those tears seeped back into his soul, for he was unable to cry.

He is full of unshed tears, and he has frozen them into hate because they have nowhere to go. He stores them, hoards them, they are his ammunition, his fuel, the stuff that keeps him going. Just like Schuldig who is full of spite and hatred, desperate for warmth, and broken beyond redemption. I don't want Aya to become like this.

In all the time I've known him, he only wept once: when he had decided to sleep with me. It was an unhappy, defeated kind of crying, tearless, with sparse, harsh sobs. It chilled me for I knew he resented what he had done. He had surrendered to love, he blamed me for it and hated himself. He cried because his pride was bruised, because he had allowed a bloke to do this to him, and perhaps because he realised that making love is different from having a fuck...

Maybe he was grieving for what would never be.

Sometimes I wish he would cry like a woman, just once, but he refuses to let himself go.

Perhaps that's why he cannot be Asuka for me.

xxx

Next chapter: Open Books

**Notes:  
1** See 'Winding Down – Transformation'  
**2** Haiku – a form of Japanese poetry


	5. Chapter 5 Open Books

**Open Books**  
(Aya) 

Yohji has left my room, and I can let go of myself a little. Lock my door, put away the book I was pretending to read, make sure the katana is in its place. I prefer to keep it under the edge of my futon, on the side where I sleep. Lie down for a while, drifting.

Wondering.  
Longing.

No, nonsense, I do not long for him. Not for his warmth, his voice, his laughter. Not for his lips on my skin and his hands on my body. He is shopsoiled goods, used many times over and always returned. Though I am not blind – I can see why Omi likes him. They have this brotherly thing going on between them, and Ken, well, he is content when Omi is. Yohji gives the chibis the illusion of what they should have in a family, and his capacity for affection never ceases to amaze me because it is boundless and utterly indiscriminate. So they are a unit, the three of them, and I do not fit in, but that is fine by me: I do not want to fit in; I am not like them.

I think they know. Yohji can be such an open book, clear for everyone to read, though sometimes his annoying jolliness can be deceptive – it surprised me when I found out how lucid he can be, and I had to admit to myself that I was intrigued. Perhaps this is one reason why I let him come into my room so often, just to hang around and stink it out with his cigarettes. He even tries to smoke less now.

He is making an effort. He is trying to change.  
And I know he does it for me because he told me so.

I do not want this, because it means he is way too serious about all this, that he is planning into the future, and he must be expecting me to do something too. He still has not understood that we have no future. Because he never listens properly, he thinks I refuse to love him back out of consideration for him. He is wrong. It's self preservation, for if I allow myself to love him, I will not want for anything else any longer, and I will forget my revenge. Lose what is left of me. In him.

No, I do not want to change. My goal is revenge, and I cannot afford to think of anything that might lie beyond.

Yet sometimes, when I am floating between waking and sleeping, and my thoughts are not entirely my own, I wonder who we would be if we could have lived the lives we had before all this.

With him doing his sleazy little snoop jobs, and me working for my father's company... I know with certainty how my life would have been, down to the last detail. But he... well, perhaps he would have had women instead of men because I believe he does not necessarily swing this way. Perhaps he would even have stuck with one woman. He hardly speaks of her, but her name makes his eyes go dark, and his face hardens with pain and something else I recognise too well: he can hate, too, and he can be cruel beneath his layers of compassion and love.

But while I would be a different man, someone who would not dream of getting his hands dirty, Yohji would still be himself.

Yohji, made for love and life and sunshine.

My lie is worse than his. And I wonder idly whether, given a choice, I would be able to leave him behind in order to regain this life that is now lost to me...

I am not a generous man. I don't think I have the right answer to this.

xxx

Next chapter: Crying For The Past


	6. Chapter 6 Crying For The Past

**Crying For The Past  
**(Yohji) 

I am having a coffee and a smoke in the kitchen where Omi and Ken natter away about some new boyband and a concert they want to go to. Omi bought two tickets but it clashes with a soccer game Ken wants to watch on the telly, and they debate taping the game. The kettle is on again, hissig softly. The tap has been dripping for days now, it needs sorting out but Ken keeps finding excuses, and I will end up fixing it. The faint hum of the chiller in the shop vibrates through the quiet hallway. It feels odd to sit at the table, stare at a saucy magazine and let myself drift with those sounds of our current excuse for a home, our fake existence that has become so oddly real.

What if I could have my true life back? My life with Asuka.  
What if I had the power to return Aya to his old life? Maybe he would be happier than he is now.

I thought about it many a time since I ran into Schuldig while doing our deliveries. He just slipped into the passenger seat of the van when I wasn't looking, and refused to go away. He does that sometimes, and spends a lot of time talking at me. Jittery, jumpy, rushing at me like a train. I am used to it now, and mostly he makes sense in his own chilling way.

But why did he have to ask me this? I tried to forget it, but his amused voice, his glittering eyes, the slightly pained expression on his freckled face kept churning in my mind. He tends to seek me out when he has nothing else to do, no one to mess about, nothing to break, and Crawford is not in the mood for antics. Schuldig then tends to come up with this sort of thingonce in a blue moon, only to leave me stewing...

Yeah, so I could not get it out of my mind. What if losing Aya were the price for our return to a normal life?

It makes me ashamed, hurt and confused because I think my answer might be the wrong one. In that other world, he and I would never have been a pair. And I feel as though I am betraying Asuka for loving again. For loving him. Yet perhaps, there is no point in crying for the past, for what happened cannot be undone.

But what if...

I could make him love me?  
We could change our future.  
We could live a real life.

We could make dreams come true.

Schuldig laughed at me when he heard, but oddly enough, he did not prod. I wonder whether he still has dreams, too...

xxx

**The End**


End file.
